What good can come out of Missouri?

[muckefuck]

Today I discovered that a raunchy song I learned to sing back in college, The Moose Song, is set to the tune of an English ballad called Villikens and his Dinah. How did I discover this? I was listening to Johnny Cash sing a comic Western ballad called Sweet Betsy from Pike and I realised the tune was eerily familiar.

Johnny tells us in his spoken-word preface that the song concerns a young couple from Pike County, Missouri. That sent a shiver up my spine: It shares a border with the site of my adolescent exile, Lincoln County. (A landmark for out-of-staters: The largest port in Pike County, Louisiana, is only about fifteen miles downriver from Hannibal.)

My memories of Pike County are solidly positive. I saw my first opera there, we used to go eagle-watching at Lock and Dam #26 near Clarksville, and I'm pretty sure it was in the county seat that we all got shut up in a hotel room with cable and far too much sugary soda while my parents attended some event. Good times!

Comments

[bunj.livejournal.com]

Ahh, the Clarksville Apple Shed.

...it was in the county seat that we all got shut up in a hotel room with cable and far too much sugary soda while my parents attended some event.

I remember distinctly seeing the video for "Sweet Dreams" for the first time that night.

We have to get together and swap Cashes some time soon. I'm falling into a burning ring o' fire as I write this.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Mine's worth a substantial chunk of the purchase price for "Streets of Laredo" alone. Goose bumps, I tellya!

[prilicla.livejournal.com]

Wow--the version of "Sweet Betsy from Pike" that I learned in grade school was almost completely different from the one you linked to. In the grade-school version, Betsy crossed the wide prairie with her husband Ike, and there were no Mormons or lustful miners, either. Dr. Bowdler would be proud.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

No prizes for guessing which version the Man in Black sings! So I take it your Betsy didn't end up a divorced woman?

[prilicla.livejournal.com]

I should say not! As I recall, that version ended with:

They swam the wide rivers, they crossed the tall peaks.
They camped out on prairies for weeks and for weeks.
Fought hunger and Injuns and suffered much pain,
But they reached California in spite of the rain!

A quick Google search turned up a similar schoolchild's version. I was interested to see that the modern school version doesn't include the verse where poor Betsy gives out in the desert and rolls around in the sand, which was definitely in the version I learned. However, the modern adaptation does keep the verse about Ike funking out, which I don't remember learning at all. I'm sure Christina Hoff Sommers would have something to say about that.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

I hadn't realized that Sweet Betsy was from Pike co., MO. That is one of my ancestral homelands. Thomas Elder Fullerton (b. 1767 in Ireland) arrived there from Kentucky about 1818. His son moved on to SW MO about 1830. Didn't get as far as Betsy and Ike.